Being the total bunhead that I am, I went and saw the cinema relay of The Royal Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale the other night.

On the whole, I am a fan of these cinema broadcasts, although I don’t attend with consistency.  There’s something about going to the movie theater that just doesn’t mesh with my idea of going to the ballet.  However, the view is always amazing, the film quality is very high, and you get close-ups that you wouldn’t at the theater. Admittedly, you lose the sense of the stage as a whole, and therefore that full-scale movement.  So there are pros and cons.

The biggest pro, of course, is getting to see a company like The Royal Ballet without having to actually go to London. (The Royal Ballet has been a particular favorite of mine for over a decade now, and I always jump at the chance to see them perform.)

The Winter’s Tale (2014) is a co-production between The Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.  As it happens, the National Ballet of Canada is here in San Francisco this week.  They’re performing John Neumeier’s Nijinsky—I wish it were The Winter’s Tale.  Because I really liked it.  A lot.

I was unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s play. It’s a doozy.  The ballet, which unfolds over three acts, starts with high drama, interjects a sunny middle, and concludes with a mixture of joy and sadness.  The ending actually made me teary, which is extremely notable for me.

This ballet was dance-heavy.  Unlike Frankenstein and Cinderella, neither of which seem to have enough dancing given their size, The Winter’s Tale has tons.  It has ensemble numbers and pas de deux and solos.  It uses very little mime to advance the story. The entire second act is dancing—high-energy, happy dancing.  In an interview, Wheeldon said that the second act was meant to give the corps something to do.  The ballet also serves as a great opportunity for the dancers because there are so many featured parts.

The first principal couple was fantastically performed by Ryoichi Hirano and Lauren Cuthbertson as King Leontes and Queen Hermione.  Hirano’s face was wonderfully expressive (an example of the benefit of seeing the ballet through film close-ups), and you absolutely felt the emotional anguish he went through. Cuthbertson was his equal. At one of the intermissions, there was a backstage interview with her, and it was entertaining to get a peek at the woman who so regally embodied the Queen; they seem very unalike.  I was struck by the extent to which dancers really are actors, and extraordinary ones.

Coming in marked contrast to act one, the pure-dance second act was set in sunny Bohemia and was led by Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntigirov as a pair of carefree young lovers.  These two will be paired in the upcoming cinema broadcast of Manon.  It will be interesting to see how they interpret such a different couple!

The lighting was exceptional.  In the first act, King Leontes imagines that his wife is having an affair with his best friend.  We see Leontes reading into the innocuous interaction he observes between Hermione and his friend.  Cuthbertson and Matthew Ball (as the friend) walked along a hallway of sculptures, casually chatting about the art.  When they are in front of each sculpture, they’re fully lit, with Hirano’s Leontes lurking in the shadows.  As they pass between the sculptures, Hirano comes into the light in front of them.  Cuthbertson and Ball fall into shadow, lit just enough to see them in a series of suggestive lifts, representing what Hirano is imagining is going on between the two.  It was such a great moment—theatrical and dramatic, but efficient, and surprisingly effective at communicating what’s happening.  If this were Swan Lake, Hirano’s character would have likely had a complex mime sequence representing an interior monologue.  Here, it became a silent dialogue between light and dark, reality and irrational fear.

These were some of the highlights for me. I would most definitely see the ballet again.  Indeed, I look forward to it.

The Royal Ballet:  The Winter’s Tale
March 27, 2018, at 7 pm at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas
Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on February 28, 2018